2.2's Instant Ship and Module Transport - Yay or Nay?

[rain_walker]

You are already in a ship. Use that until the one arrives for which you were too lazy to get it yourself.. ship transfer is a service provided by the station, not a right you inherit from your ancestors

So no point of automatic transfer then.. u want it real .? go drive it urself! let ED delete this feature .. and the module transfer.. and everything fun along with it

 

[Lobstris]

Really? killed the game ? .. that's a bit strong.

<Anecdote>I explained all of this drama to a friend who's just got Elite on the PC, and sent him a link to the GamesCom feed. He shot back pretty much the same sentiment, that 'games have died for less'. He also (oddly enough) said that lots of his player group were coming back to Elite from ESO, which flew in the face of my conventional received wisdom that Elite was dying anyway, but I digress...</Anecdote>.

 

[KakerMix]

Module and ship transfers that are instant are great. Least amount of work for Frontier, best outcome for lots of (perhaps the majority of!) players, and a month after it goes live will just fold into 'how the game works' and everyone all up in arms now will still be playing Elite because what are they going to do, go play No Man's Sky? lmao please.

 

[Lobstris]

Wrong. As soon as people start abusing it for 22LY teleportation to and from Jaques then every Explorer who has lived under the illusion that they traveled 22LY (as opposed to merely changes instances) there will be a whole new poop storm.

And back in the bubble, the proliferation of Expensive Anaconda Taxis will destroy the jump range mechanic entirely. Causing people in combat ships to wonder why they are being punished with a "travel tax" and being coerced into flying transport ships they may not even like. At the very least it's going to create a grating resentment from a significant portion of the pew pew crowd, many of whom worked their butts off to get a 20LY jump range FDL.

I share your hopes in the coming revolution Comrade!

 

[Luniticisi]

<Anecdote>I explained all of this drama to a friend who's just got Elite on the PC, and sent him a link to the GamesCom feed. He shot back pretty much the same sentiment, that 'games have died for less'. He also (oddly enough) said that lots of his player group were coming back to Elite from ESO, which flew in the face of my conventional received wisdom that Elite was dying anyway, but I digress...</Anecdote>.

If the Engineers uproar didn't "Kill" Elite .. I very much doubt this will.

 

[Lobstris]

Module and ship transfers that are instant are great. Least amount of work for Frontier, best outcome for lots of (perhaps the majority of!) players, and a month after it goes live will just fold into 'how the game works' and everyone all up in arms now will still be playing Elite because what are they going to do, go play No Man's Sky? lmao please.

True. We'll have to keep playing Elite - but only 'cus there isn't anything comparable out there... yet.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Wrong. As soon as people start abusing it for 22LY teleportation to and from Jaques then every Explorer who has lived under the illusion that they traveled 22LY (as opposed to merely changes instances) there will be a whole new poop storm.

And back in the bubble, the proliferation of Expensive Anaconda Taxis will destroy the jump range mechanic entirely. Causing people in combat ships to wonder why they are being punished with a "travel tax" and being coerced into flying transport ships they may not even like. At the very least it's going to create a grating resentment from a significant portion of the pew pew crowd, many of whom worked their butts off to get a 20LY jump range FDL.

This will encourage the new bubble to expand.
From a gameplay perspective i think FD made the right call.

 

[askavir]

Wrong. As soon as people start abusing it for 22LY teleportation to and from Jaques then every Explorer who has lived under the illusion that they traveled 22LY (as opposed to merely changes instances) there will be a whole new poop storm.

And back in the bubble, the proliferation of Expensive Anaconda Taxis will destroy the jump range mechanic entirely. Causing people in combat ships to wonder why they are being punished with a "travel tax" and being coerced into flying transport ships they may not even like. At the very least it's going to create a grating resentment from a significant portion of the pew pew crowd, many of whom worked their butts off to get a 20LY jump range FDL.

The worse thing is that casting summon ship has already escalated into the next step: there are already people talking about teleporting the ship where the player is in to any destination. And that is when every single mechanic involving flight and travel (so pretty much everything) will go into the bin.

 

[Luniticisi]

The worse thing is that casting summon ship has already escalated into the next step: there are already people talking about teleporting the ship where the player is in to any destination. And that is when every single mechanic involving flight and travel (so pretty much everything) will go into the bin.

People talking about it and FD implementing it are two very different things .. that won't happen.

 

[Frambitam]

Somebody earlier mentioned ED playing to their strengths, which is the scientific accuracy and immersion. I have to agree that instant transfer is totally out of character with the apparent ethos of the game. But it goes deeper - the entire reason that I, for one, am invested in this game and not Star Citizen or No Man's Sky or any other game is because of the realism and immersion. There's so little out there for hard sci-fi fans, and I'm not saying this one thing is going to "kill the game", but if it's indicative of a direction we are likely to see in the future then people like me are simply going to lose interest.

 

[robbyp]

I would humbly say to Frontier to reconsider instant transport.

It breaks the distant mechanic in the game

It means you could hop into a long range hauler (cheap) or anaconda for instance, fly 300 ly in 20 mins, then summon your !imited range fdl to you. Therefore making the difference in jump distances between the fdl and other ships immaterial. This is just one example.

Whats the point having ships with different jump ranges if you can break this mechanism by instance call.

Make the time to get the ship dependent on its jump range and your distance to it

 

[SqualZell]

Sry i didn't read through 53 pages of almost 800 posts

but I don't think it should be instant transfer, but also keep it to a reasonable level #thisisjustagame

my suggestions and 2 cents
10 seconds for each max lightyear jump the ship can do.

example 1,
200Ly ship transfer
The ship can jump max of 20Ly/Jump
thus 10 jumps at 10 seconds each = 100 seconds wait (thats less than 2 minutes for 200Ly transfer)

example 2, lets take this to the extreme
The galaxy is aprox 100 000 Ly across.
same ship of 20Ly/jump
at 10 seconds per jump, that would take close to 14 hours

14 hours to get your ship from one side of the galaxy to the complete opposite to me is quite reasonable.

disclaimer: I am an eve online vet... my skills take 3-4 weeks to train, so 14 hours is basically nothing
you activate it before bed, and next day after work the ship will be there waiting for you.

Pricing will also have to be adjusted, and maybe just buying a new ship might be cheaper and faster

 

[WeirdWizard]

Somebody earlier mentioned ED playing to their strengths, which is the scientific accuracy and immersion. I have to agree that instant transfer is totally out of character with the apparent ethos of the game. But it goes deeper - the entire reason that I, for one, am invested in this game and not Star Citizen or No Man's Sky or any other game is because of the realism and immersion. There's so little out there for hard sci-fi fans, and I'm not saying this one thing is going to "kill the game", but if it's indicative of a direction we are likely to see in the future then people like me are simply going to lose interest.

Scientific accuracy? Hard Scifi? Are you sure you're playing Elite Dangerous? The same Elite Dangerous with world war 2 fighters in space, respawning players, community goals, persistent shared world that people appear and disappear from, board game faction system, silly exposed cockpits, magic drive systems and dozens of other gamey systems? In fact the "realistic" hard scifi elements in ED boil down to the distribution of stars and planets and the rotating space stations.

At least ship transport is easy to ignore if you don't like it.

 

[Ironwolf]

Yes and Yes/
If we can 3d print fighter drones then surely stations can 3d print ships. (i.e. directly copy the layout of your owned ship)

What happens to the originals?
Second-hand ship market required.

 

[raymondo the great]

People talking about it and FD implementing it are two very different things .. that won't happen.

Thing is once you break the time/distance mechanic for one speed their "defence" for the way other mechanics are (scientific realism) is worthless and you end up with "but you did it for ship transfer" the screams reach a crescendo and just like with multiple AI nerfs in the past, and other submissions to the casual crew they give in.

It's happened before so saying it won't happen again is really a bit silly

Once you remove a cornerstone of the game (realistic travel times) then everything based on that is up for grabs, plain and simple.

 

[stephen_usher]

As per my previous comment, I can see why they're doing this, as they don't want to/can't set up huge numbers of timers on the servers, which would update the database at the correct time. It's not scalable. You can't have the timers in the client as (a) they're not running all the time, and (b) it could be hacked.

However, what I wouldn't mind is "next day delivery" on all modules and ships. A player would basically put a request in for transfer and on the next tick of the galaxy status all the ships and modules are moved. This is as scalable as you can get, but it would still be a higher overhead for Frontier's servers and would require back-end development, whereas the proposed solution is purely client based (with an API call to the database engine).

So, basically, anything other than instant or galaxy tick based movement is out of the window.

Would people consider "Next Day Delivery" a good compromise?

 

[raymondo the great]

magic drive systems and dozens of other gamey systems?

Magic is anything achievable by science that is beyond a persons understanding.

Considering that there is already sound theory behind the FSD it is not beyond the realms of possibility that that theory would become reality in 1000 years!

But just because you don't understand it doesn't make it "magic"

It's not.

Its science!

 

[Spookyy]

Instant Ship and Module Transport? Heck yes!

 

[WeirdWizard]

Magic is anything achievable by science that is beyond a persons understanding.

Considering that there is already sound theory behind the FSD it is not beyond the realms of possibility that that theory would become reality in 1000 years!

But just because you don't understand it doesn't make it "magic"

It's not.

Its science!

Okay pal if you say so ;-)

 

[Luniticisi]

The worse thing is that casting summon ship has already escalated into the next step: there are already people talking about teleporting the ship where the player is in to any destination. And that is when every single mechanic involving flight and travel (so pretty much everything) will go into the bin.

People talking about it and FD implementing it are two very different things .. that won't happen.

Thing is once you break the time/distance mechanic for one speed their "defence" for the way other mechanics are (scientific realism) is worthless and you end up with "but you did it for ship transfer" the screams reach a crescendo and just like with multiple AI nerfs in the past, and other submissions to the casual crew they give in.

It's happened before so saying it won't happen again is really a bit silly

Once you remove a cornerstone of the game (realistic travel times) then everything based on that is up for grabs, plain and simple.

When has anything this crazy happened before ?